The idea of young people being taught how to look after themselves in the outdoors seems rather obvious today, but formal instruction in outdoor centres is relatively new. Eric Langmuir, who has died of cancer aged 74, was a central figure both as a teacher and in setting down how such things should be done. His book Mountaincraft and Leadership, published in 1969, was quickly regarded as the bible for mountain instructors and has never been out of print, selling more than 150,000 copies.

Langmuir was born in Glasgow, the son of a doctor who enjoyed fly-fishing in the Highlands and took his family with him. Eric and his sister Marjorie were soon off on their own, cycling to the Cairngorms in winter with skis perched across their handlebars.

Langmuir was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh, and read natural sciences at Cambridge, where he joined the Cambridge University mountaineering club (CUMC), later becoming its president. His skiing trips had led on to snow and ice climbing, and he now developed formidable rock climbing skills, too. His first ascents included routes on such Scottish cliffs as Etive Slabs. At university, he made lifelong friends, among them Chris Brasher.

After graduation in 1955, Langmuir set off for the Alps with Cambridge friends Geoff Sutton and Bob Downes, and the Oxford climber Alan Blackshaw. The team made the first British ascent of the north face of the Piz Badile, an elegant sweep of granite in the Bregaglia, and climbed in the Mont Blanc range where, Blackshaw recalled, Langmuir's attention to safety was already well developed.

Langmuir then took up a geology post in Canada, where he met his future wife Maureen Lyons, a Londoner working for the Canadian film board. After jobs with British Newfoundland Exploration and the Mining Corporation of Canada in British Columbia and Alaska, the couple returned to London, where Eric taught geography at a school in Wimbledon.

The outdoor life, however, was dragging him back, and, in 1959, his Cambridge mountaineering connections bore fruit. Sir Jack Longland, another former CUMC president, who had attempted Everest in the 1930s, had, as director of education for Derbyshire, established an outdoor centre at Whitehall, near Buxton, and offered Eric the directorship (his chief instructor was the legendary Manchester climber Joe Brown). After four years, Langmuir returned to Scotland to run the national centre at Glenmore Lodge, the longest established outdoor centre in Britain.

He had clearly found his niche as a skilled teacher in a broad sweep of activities, from hillwalking and climbing to canoeing and skiing, and set about developing the centre's curriculum to meet the new boom in outdoor education. Until his arrival, Glenmore Lodge had hosted residential courses for schoolchildren, but Langmuir realised the centre's usefulness could be exponentially greater if it specialised in training leaders to spread expertise more widely. For him, adventure was not about seeking risk, but operating skilfully in a hazardous environment to minimise risk. Wild places demanded self-reliance. "A decision without the pressure of consequence," he argued, "was hardly a decision at all."

His influence was not confined to Glenmore Lodge. Almost every committee or structure put in place to improve safety in the mountains, from mountain rescue to avalanche awareness, drew on Langmuir's experience and intelligence. He became chair of the Scottish mountain rescue committee, for which he was appointed MBE, and was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his research into avalanches.

Langmuir was intimately acquainted with this terrifying threat, having been caught up in an avalanche in 1964, while searching for some boys who had gone missing from a youth hostel in the Cairngorms. He was swept 600ft down the mountain, but, typically, his curiosity converted the experience into a new field of interest, that of avalanche researcher. He and his colleagues spent much time digging holes in the snow and studying differences between the various layers.

With their children reaching school age, the Langmuirs moved to Edinburgh in 1970, where Eric set up an outdoor education unit at Moray House further education college. In 1976, he became assistant director for leisure services in Lothian, responsible for the Hillend ski centre, then Britain's largest artificial ski centre, and a new sailing training centre at Port Edgar.

His years at Lothian, however, were overshadowed by Maureen's death in 1980, and the responsibility of taking care of four teenage children. After taking early retirement in 1988, he returned to the Cairngorms and built a house designed by his architect son, Roddy. At 60, he took up orienteering, travelling the world with his partner Marion MacCormick to take part in competitions. Aged 70, he climbed Mont Blanc and the Cuillin Ridge on Skye. Despite undergoing treatment for cancer last year, he completed a new edition of Mountaincraft and returned to orienteering, competing in Norway a few weeks before his death.

There was nothing authoritarian about Langmuir. Friends from throughout his career recall how he managed the trick of being enthusiastic and personally warm, while still getting things done. He is survived by Marion and his children, Catriona, Roddy, Moira and Sean, the latter trio all former members of the British ski team.